A Sign is the Spoken Exemplar

The artist's universe is always a place of infinite and moving presences. In the same way, Simona Weller's universe is populated of art's memories, of literature, of characters, of paintings and images.

If on the one hand this articulate and vivid world leaves an indelible sign of its passing, on the other hand it is thwarted by the artist's creativity which absorbs it in favour of a unique and original production. In Weller's works, we can recognize the same elements found in Braque's world, such as "waltz", patches of material, hand painted mimetic wallpaper. These elements are more than just a memory; they are a real and true statement, witnessing the artist's cultural and visual background. Recalling historical parts of images in the pictures - without influencing the work in its original spirit- only becomes possible when the work is already firmly developed.

Apprenticeship of experience is the road taken by the artist to reach her aim and to immediately abandon it once she has fulfilled it. In this dense pathway of discoveries, of sudden turn-backs designed to quickly step forward in the path to her ideal canvas -which stretches and unrolls, pressed by the paint-brush's coups- the images compose the logical thread of her own process.

The hedged unintelligible, lonely words have lived in Simona Weller's pictures for a long time, until they began stretching and loosening up to lose their actual shape and to be reduced to the essentiality of a secret writing made of signs and colours.

While the artist writes things that only rarely become words, her pictorial translation is refined and light, not devoid of a polite irony. It is here that "A sign is the specimen spoken". Words now come out, all together, in a paradoxically mute shouting; these words with no voice then become colour and dart through every corner of the picture.

The title of the pictures plays gaily and ironically and if, on one hand, they are the effect of the Gertrude Stein's able pen, on the other hand they are the result of Simona Weller's wise harvest.

So the "Ode to a lady's eyebrows" ("Ode alle ciglia di una signora") acts as a counterpoint and confirmation to the idea that "A place is not a new table" ("Un posto non è un tavolo nuovo"), while everybody knows that "A piece of coffee doesn't make you lose time" ("Un pezzo di caffè non fa perdere tempo"), while we can state, not without a certain circumspection, that "In a white belt all the shadows are unique" ("In una cintura Bianca tutte le ombre sono singolari"); and all this leaves space both for educational works "How painting is written" ("Come è scritta la pittura") and to the wise options "Choose large soles and small quarrels" ("Scegli suole grandi e pochi litigi"), etc...

Quite a serious game, which slightly deposits to confirm the uncountable possibilities of ineffable female qualities. Although a distinction between female art or male art doesn't exist, what does exist are the distinct qualities of the feminine and the masculine sides, which come out of the paintings regardless of the artist's actual gender.

Like a projection of the most secret intimacy, in their shapes and in their colours the pictures reveal much more than that they actually show: a new soul, which belongs to them only, and the effect of the interlacing of very diverse elements.

In the sometimes chaotic (but always intense) feminine storytelling of the last ten years, words piled up one over another until this brought to silence; at the same time, thought continuously fermented. In the same way, Simona Weller's pictorial speech materializes, condenses on the picture as natural chromatic pastes and shapes, which come out of a wise and conscious paint-brush.

In the acute and prehensile flowing of glance, every informed eye will be able, in this exhibition, to catch a glimpse of the artist's painting-path.

Rome, January 1983